imkittymyers at hotmail dot com
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
"IT'S ALL THIS GLOBAL WARMING"
A couple of weeks ago, there was severe flooding in the Northeast. A section of I-88 over a culvert, between Sidney and Unadilla (NY), collapsed causing two truckers to plunge to their death. This is a picture of the reconstruction of that highway. In the meantime, however, traffic has been detoured. We travel this highway every time we visit our relatives.
The homes of both my niece and nephew were flooded. It was the second serious flooding my niece's home has endured within fifteen months. Of course, their home is right next to the Susquehanna River. So naturally, when we all got together over the weekend, the topic du jour was the flood. As my niece was bringing us up to date on their home, she said, "It's all this global warming."
Just the words "global warming" grate on me, like fingernails on a chalkboard. So I replied, "Do you know that when Grandma B was married in July of 1911 it was 105*?"
You would have thought that hot weather was a recent phenomena by the looks on their faces.
Heat wave was 'truly amazing': Seventy years ago this week, a two-week heat wave across much of Canada claimed the lives of almost 800 people, destroyed crops, killed livestock and even prompted the authorities to allow topless bathing suits on men.
From July 5-17, 1936, the country baked from Alberta to Ontario, with temperatures soaring as high as 44.4 C [112*F] in St. Albans, Man.
…
Horses drawing carriages were known simply to drop dead in the street because of the heat, fruit literally baked on the trees and transients were recruited directly off trains to help fight forest fires.
…
"The climate is changing all the time, and what's going on right now is well within natural variability."
While we're on the subject ...
Top 10 Ways to Destroy Earth: Destroying the Earth is harder than you may have been led to believe.
You've seen the action movies where the bad guy threatens to destroy the Earth. You've heard people on the news claiming that the next nuclear war or cutting down rainforests or persisting in releasing hideous quantities of pollution into the atmosphere threatens to end the world.
Fools.
The Earth was built to last. It is a 4,550,000,000-year-old, 5,973,600,000,000,000,000,000-tonne ball of iron. It has taken more devastating asteroid hits in its lifetime than you've had hot dinners, and lo, it still orbits merrily.
So my first piece of advice to you, dear would-be Earth-destroyer, is: do not think this will be easy.
In other news ...
8 Hotels Housing Sex Offenders
8 Pam, at Blogmeister, attended the Protest Against the NYT and has posted some great photos she took.
8 Even if you're not a writer, you'll love the hilarious Random notes to the authors of the last seven POD* books I read: The heroine of your novel should probably have the same first name throughout the entire book. Probably. … I think you meant assuage, not ass gauge. [*POD in this case means self-published.]
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